


Permutations and The Art of War

by asongtosaygoodbye



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Hannibal/Prison, Institutionalized Hannibal, Lady Murasaki - Freeform, Mind Palace, Origami, Plotting, Post-Capture, a brief mention of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 04:02:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3753745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asongtosaygoodbye/pseuds/asongtosaygoodbye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'There are so many now, perched and creased and folded and lined up neatly, each in their place, each adhering to the measure of aesthetic and sensation evoked and pressed liked the murmur of a secret coiled tender between the lines of their crisp margins.'</p><p>In which Hannibal ruminates in his cell and folds origami and lies in wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Permutations and The Art of War

**Author's Note:**

> So, idontfindyouthatinteresting on tumblr mentioned wanting to see Hannibal folding origami in prison in Season 3, and that image sort of spoke with me and then words kind of...spewed.

  ****

There are so many now, perched and creased and folded and lined up neatly, each in their place, each adhering to the measure of aesthetic and sensation evoked and pressed liked the murmur of a secret coiled tender between the lines of their crisp margins.

Fingerprints that have long since been inked and pressed and embedded into the records system graze over the fibers of the page pressed between them, meditative, efficient. When he is behaving as they wish, it occasionally earns him access to proper paper, chiyogami that is not as fine as anything that his aunt would keep in her stationery box, but better than using clippings from dull magazines with plasticine faces and outdated information splayed across them. He finds them distasteful and chooses to imagine against it, to wrought the iron of his mind into a new shape, retrofitting them to sit on a shelf of polished rosewood cast in gold by the fire, not bowed across the concrete of his grey blue cage under the narcotic cast of dim fluorescents.

He folds them slowly, savoring the moments of it all coming together at his behest, evolving from page to shape to animal to the splendor of his own predilection, each and every piece a careful allegory of memory, figures for him to shift and manipulate and alter into the stretched canvas of a narrative of his choosing, a sequence of events and emotions that he finds fit, hands baring the bones of his private ambitions a moment before resolving and obscuring them into careful folds of paper, catalogued in a way that only he can see, only he can understand, only he can decipher.

Mnemonic and pristine and untouchable, just another facet of himself kept aloft from the prying, pedestrian minds around him, foolish things that attempt to sift through his silences and the gaps between what he says and what they think he is bound to mean,

but he has never been bound here, not really.

Body trapped and shut away and made an exhibition, yes, but his mind is bright and as lofty as the eaves of the wings folded into his myriad of cranes, kept sharp and close and waiting for precisely the right moment, ruminating in the meantime, letting them watch him fold harmless bits of paper, drowning them with the hypnotic gentleness of  the motion until that is the only thing that they can see,

slowly forgetting about the echo of the deeds wrapped carnivore sharp around his knuckles, the quiet violence that has quaked fearsome through his tendons and down his steady bones,

waiting.

He never intended to stay locked there for long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
